Naota's Adventures In Space
by Kami no Neko
Summary: Naota is abducted by Haruko! Eri too! What will become of them! Chapter 3 is up now!
1. Confusion

DISCLAIMER: I don't own FLCL or any of the characters from it.

Pa-KING!

He hit it out of the park. It was really no big deal. It didn't mean the game was won. It didn't mean anything would change. It was just another home run for him. I'm sure he knew that, but he was probably proud anyway. It takes a good swing to hit it very far at all, and a better one to hit it over the spectators.

I was sucking the pulpy soda through a straw that I stuck in the can while I watched him dash around the bases, first, second, third, and slide into home. I saw him stand up out of the dirt and raise his fist in his own personal victory. I rolled my eyes. There he was, my brother, the baseball player. He left six years ago, and he hasn't even come to visit us. He was busy being an American superstar, attending big red carpet events, being fooly cooly with different women, smiling at his fans from the cover of some big-shot American magazine. I was busy getting ready for college and trying to forget about my old haunts from grade school (I've never seen anything as ordinary since). And right now I was watching Nandaba Tasuku gloat about a single, commonplace home run in baseball. Oh, brother, how he's changed.

"Nao! Dinner!"

I threw my soda can in the trash and turned off the TV. It was cold that night, and I was almost looking forward to whatever spicy curry dish we were having in hopes that it might occupy my thoughts otherwise.

**MANGA VIEW**

"WHAT THE HELL?!!!"

"Why are you yelling?" Father. Nandaba Kamon.

"Hurry up and sit down!" Grandpa. Nandaba Shigekuni.

And there was someone who was not supposed to be there.

"Hey there!"

That was Haruko. Haruhara Haruko, or as Amarao would call her, Ruhara. She was the one who tainted my childhood, and she was the one person I wished I wouldn't see ever again. And now, here she was, in my dining room, eating as though she'd been living with us for years. She smiled at me from above her plate of curry, and I noticed her hair was a few inches longer now, though still pink. "You grew up so fast, Tak-kun." She scarfed a mouthful of curry and swallowed hurriedly. "Guess you're ready to go, now, huh?"

**END MANGA VIEW**

I froze to my spot. I could see my expression of disdain and fury reflected in her eyes, and she took on a puzzled look. I only saw it for a flash before I was out the door and halfway across the bridge. I was one of the fastest in my high school, because I ran so much. I almost ran past the metro station before I saw someone standing in the dim light. I stopped for a second, thinking it was Mamimi. Why did I think that? Because that woman had come back. The one who forced me to grow up. She was taking over my head again. Oh, where were the eyebrows when I needed them?

Well, anyway, it wasn't Mamimi, it was Eri. She was standing in the dusky light, her hair in a long ponytail and legs exposed below her black miniskirt. She was reading something, and she had to wear glasses and use a flashlight. She looked cute in glasses. They made her seem even more sophisticated than she already was. Her eyes wandered up and she waved. "Hey, Naota."

I shoved my cold hands in the pocket of my jacket and made my way down the stairs. "What are you reading?"

"_The Aeneid_ by Virgil. It's a classic; you should check it out if you like advanced material like that."

I smirked. "You think it's hard?"

Eri dog-eared a page and closed the book. "What's wrong?" She put her glasses away in her pocket and shivered.

I shrugged. "Nothing. There's nothing wrong."

"You're a terrible liar, you know?" She stood on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around my neck. "Come on, what happened?"

I leaned into her shoulder and could smell her perfume. It wasn't too strong, but it smelled like vanilla. "Haruko's back." 

I felt her body go tense for a moment before she relaxed and began to run her fingers through my hair. "So what are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'm going to pretend she's not there, that's what," I replied. 

Eri stood back. "You know she'll try and make you do something weird. She'll probably hit you with that guitar of hers again and make you do weird things. I don't want that to happen again. It was enough when we were kids. It happened to both of us."

My expression hardened. "I won't let it happen again. At least... not here. Not in Mabase. I won't let anyone get hurt."

Eri didn't say anything. She just adjusted her glasses and picked up her Aeneid again. I watched two trains pass by while she read. The sky was cloudy and dusk was fast approaching. I watched the golden clouds float over my head, signifying some kind of temporary peace that might be gone in a few seconds. They were already starting to thin, and I began to suspect something. Eri looked up, too. We heard an engine revving... it sounded like a Vespa...

Eri and I looked across the space at each other simultaneously. "She's here!"

It was barely a moment later... 

"HEREICOMEREADYORNOOOOOOT!!!!!!"

Her guitar was a pearly white 1966 Rickenbacker 370/12Byrd, and she was twirling it like it was a propeller! I was surprised she didn't just fly off the top of the stairs. She made a move to hit me, but I was one step ahead of her. I jumped back into the metro tracks and jumped aside just as she swung...

_BOOOOOOOOM....._

Haruko had slammed the guitar into the wall! It was perfectly fine, but the concrete had shattered. Her Vespa was overturned on the tracks, and she stood there looking at me with an astounded expression. It only took a few seconds before I heard the clacking of train wheels and saw the headlights reflected off the walls of the tunnel. Eri pulled me off the tracks just as it came around, but Haruko did not move. I saw her take a stance and pull that guitar out...

"Haruko, NO! Don't do that! You'll cause more damage than it's worth!" I screamed at her. She didn't listen. She never listened when I told her to do something. Before we knew it, the train conductor had a huge lump on his head and he was cursing the pink-haired woman, who was starting up her Vespa, for what I do not know. Eri was standing behind me, tugging at my coat sleeve. "Let's get out of here, Naota; I'm afraid she'll do something else."

I didn't say a word. I turned around, grabbed Eri's hand, and we started running. It wasn't long before we heard an engine behind us. We knew we were in for it.

"Well, we tried..."

SLAM!

Yeah, it had to be me again. I went sprawling on the ground. Haruko grabbed me by the head and sat me on the back of her Vespa. What could I do? I saw Eri running up and saying something before my mind went blank again. 

"Got the photos you requested, chief. They look okay?"

Enter a room in a high-rise building, where there is a young woman dressed in jeans and a dark blue button-up shirt. She's got her auburn hair in a messy updo held together by a barrette, and the man in front of her is looking at some photos she brought in. He looks up at her and she anticipates both the best and the worst.

"These are great, Samejima. I'll give you $500 for the entire set."

"It's a deal. Thanks, chief; I'll be back in a couple of days." She takes her paycheck from the man and starts out the door. You're looking at Mamimi Samejima, the Japanese photographer/high-school dropout that came to America. I'm doing okay here. Got a nice little apartment in the Bronx all fixed up for myself, and they even let Tak-kun, my cat, stay there with me. I'm making a lot more money as a freelancer than expected. I see my name under a lot of photos in the tabloids. I even saw my name in the Times once, and I was really proud of that. That was when I made a lot of money in one day. It was one of my best photos, and it was when they did a Christmas concert with all the big stars. I was there, and I took a photo of a little girl getting an autograph from Mandy Moore. The alignment and expression was so great, and I was glad I took it before I got pushed out of the way.

So right now I am going up to the roof of the high-rise building, because it is night-time and I like to watch the stars sometimes. This is the best place to see, because New York is so light-polluted. But there's no light on top of that building. And that's why it's best to see from there. I took out a cigarette and lit it. The smoke curled up and blurred the stars, and I felt mad at myself after that. I was alone. I could see Orion, Taurus and the Seven Sisters, all in a row. Orion was chasing Taurus, who was chasing the Seven Sisters, who were fleeing in fear for eternity. I wished someone could come and rearrange the stars, so that Orion would save the Sisters and kill Taurus.

A blazing red star caught my sight. It was bright, and it had come from the west. _What kind of star in its right mind would come from the west?_ I thought. But it kept getting larger and larger, and soon enough I could hear the rumble of its fire. I took my camera out and tried to get a straight shot at this meteor. What a great story that would make! A meteor over New York...

As it streaked past, I was blown over by the heat and force of its passing. Something snapped in me, and I knew I had seen that meteor before. As it curved in an arc and went up towards space, I ran down the stairs and boarded the elevator. _I have to get that photo developed now._

I thought... it must have been him.

Tak-kun.

He'd just gotten a big interruption in his life.

Hi! That's the introductory chapter! Stay tuned for the beginning of Naota's Adventures In Space! It's gonna be big!

Kami no Neko =^-.-^=


	2. Jupiter

I couldn't hear a thing. My ears felt like they were being sucked out from the inside. I knew I had woken up, and I knew I wasn't anyplace normal. Had I finally left the bland town of Mabase behind? If so, where was I?

The empty space where my brain was supposed to be finally transferred some shred of memory to the front of my thoughts. I panicked. Where was Haruko? What had happened to Eri? WHERE HAD RAHARU TAKEN ME TO?! I opened my eyes and could almost feel the thick black mist all around me. This definitely wasn't Mabase. It wasn't even earthly. Was I dead? Or was this some strand of space that had no stars and no clouds? How very strange...

"Wondering where we are, huh, Tak-kun?"

The noise startled me; until now it had been completely silent.  It was only then I saw Haruko. She was completely different. She was Raharu now. She was dressed in an Evangelion-style suit, except it was made all of what looked like radioactive platinum. She was standing on that Rickenbacker again. I don't know how those things took so much abuse from her -_-*. She was looking at me. She was different from when I'd ever seen her before; she seemed like Julius Caesar, a benevolent dictator who had overthrown my system of life several times and then come back with the best policies for a new one. She addressed me, and I sat/stood/lay there dumbfounded. I wanted to ask her where we were, and what had happened to Eri.

"Don't worry, your girlfriend's fine. See, she's right there." I turned around and saw that Eri was sitting behind me and sleeping, her arms around my waist. We were sitting on the yellow Vespa. "Flying through space, yeah?" Haruko—Raharu—said. "You wanted out of that old dump of a town, and here's your ticket. Hope you enjoy the ride."

I nodded dumbly, unwilling to argue with her. Anyplace was better than Mabase. At least this was somewhat exciting. I'd never been in space before. Though, I suppose, neither have most earthlings. I wanted to ask Raharu something, but I opened my mouth and may as well have been yammering like a mute. Raharu smirked. "Sorry, you can't talk until we're in an area with some atmosphere. I could try to teach you telepathy—that's how you can hear me, yeah?—but it'd take longer than the time it's taking for us to reach our destination."

TELEPATHY?! I would have face-faulted if there was gravity. I knew Raharu was an alien, but honestly...

She sat down on the edge of her flying guitar and swung her legs around. I just decided to go back to sleep. It wasn't fun, much less fair, to be in a black hole where the only sound was Raharu's telepathic yada-yada.

"Meow?"

"I know, Tak-kun, I'm sorry, you'll just have to be hungry until I'm done with this roll... just a few more pictures..."

"Meow."

"Don't give me that... this takes time, ya know. And I really want to find out what that picture is of."

My little black cat jumped off my shoulder and curled up on the floor of the darkroom. He was very hungry, but I had my priorities in order before he had come in. I needed to get the photo done. I had a hunch, a suspicion, but it wasn't a sure thing. If it was what I suspected, it would make a great story for the papers. Maybe I'd be in the Times again; that'd be nice. The picture would cover the top half of the front page, and they might even interview me. "I am just glad I had a camera at that moment. It was such a great thing, and I'm so happy to have gotten a shot at it." That's what I would say. After all, it didn't matter to me personally what the meteor might have been. I had left whatever mattered behind six years ago.

Now I watched the picture carefully as the colors and outlines began to form inside the white frame. It was definitely red; there had been no mistake about that. It was less streaky than usual. The shot had been perfectly lined up. I cleaned off my glasses and pushed them back on the bridge of my nose, watching the lines. I gasped when I finally could make it out. It was in the shape of a Vespa. There was something hanging off of it... a girl with long hair. It looked like Ninamori-san, the daughter of the mayor of Mabase back in the old country. And where she was, Tak-kun was bound to have something to do with it.

_"My name is Naota! Don't ever call me Tak-kun again!"_

I started to cry. The teardrops all just missed the edges of the photo. I went out to the balcony and looked up into the sky. The tears were freezing on my cheeks. "You finally got away, Naota. Congratulations." I wiped the water off my face. "I promise I won't put anything in the papers about you. Nobody else knows."

"Meow!"

I turned around. "Okay, it's time for lunch, chief."

I woke up and my limbs felt heavier than lead. I was on the Vespa, but I fell off in a second. I felt a hand grab my head and pull it up. My eyes could barely lift themselves up at the person. "Uhhhh....." I groaned. Raharu was standing there, a wide smirk slapped on her face. Her hair was tied back, and I was surprised it hadn't fallen out of its own accord. It was so heavy here! My jaw was dropping involuntarily. Raharu lifted me and placed my arm around her shoulders. "Relax, Tak-kun. There's nothing wrong. You just haven't gotten used to the gravity yet since you just woke up. You'll be able to walk around in no time at all, though."

Eri was behind us. "See, Tak-kun, I'm up and just as fit as a fiddle!" She flashed me a V for victory. I knew at that moment that Raharu had brainwashed her. I took as best a breath I could and wheezed out, "Whahidyoudodamuhgelfred? (translation: what did you do to my girlfriend?)" After that, I could barely get a breath. I started making noises like an old dog who's too excited about something.

Raharu and Eri both stared at me and then laughed. "S'nahfunny!" I gasped.

"You're hilarious, Tak-kun! That was a good one!" Raharu punched me and I keeled over onto the ground. I could have sworn I made a dent in the concrete floor on which we stood. I got mad. Raharu was still calling me Tak-kun, and now she'd gotten Eri into it too.

"Do... do..." I coughed, meaning to say "don't" but never finishing.

Raharu and Eri looked at me for a minute and then looked at each other. There was an awkward silence. Then they burst out singing. "DOE, A DEER, A FEMALE DEER, RAY, A DROP OF GOLDEN SUUUUN!"

I shook my head to the best of my ability as I lay pinned to the ground and watched them skip off arm in arm singing at the top of their lungs. "This... is so... not... funny... someone... help... me..." I wheezed before letting the gravity push me into the ground. I felt like Inuyasha after someone said "SIT!"

I woke up later and found myself able to stand. It was a little shaky, but I could do it. I looked around. Raharu and Eri were gone (I hadn't expected them to be anything other than that). It was also, surprisingly, night-time. Comparatively. The sky was a deep shade of burgundy, as opposed to the light pink I thought I had glimpsed before. I looked out across the landscape. There was green trees and grass and gray concrete, just like Earth, but the sky was red. 

A man passed by. Or at least he looked like a man. He was sweeping the concrete in the empty building behind me. I took a few steps forward with not too much effort and called out to him. "Hey, are you from here, too?"

The man looked up. "Yeah, aren't we all?"

"I'm not. I don't even know where I am. What is this place?"

The man grinned. "A-ha... you must be one of the humans that Raharu-san brought from earth! You must be the one whose head works!" He ran up, dropping his broom and extending his hand. "It's an honor to meet you, Nandaba-san. I'm Hiromu, the janitor at the hangar."

I forgot to shake his hand because I freaked so badly. "HANGAR? What hangar? You still haven't told me where I am!"

Hiromu laughed nervously. "Oh, right. You're on Jupiter."

I swallowed hard. "J-j-j... Jupiter?"

"Yeah, and we are in the city of Muhuri, one of the main resources for Medical Mechanica exports. Atomsk was in your town, right? He's the new—"

"You'd better come with us _now_, Tak-kun."

I turned around to face a very angry-looking Raharu. Her eyebrow was twitching, and Eri was standing by, awaiting her orders. I didn't have time to say anything before the Vespa-riding alien grabbed my wrist and tugged me off to who-knows-where. Really. The place we went to was called Who-Knows-Where café. Once there, she turned around and started yelling in my face. I couldn't understand any of it. It must have been an alien thing. I asked, "Could you repeat that in a language that I speak?"

Raharu, after meditating on her floating Rickenbacker for a few minutes, took a deep breath and started yelling again. This time, I shrank to the wall in utter fear. I won't repeat what she said, but it had something to do with her not being able to find me anywhere, me not supposed to be wandering off in a place I don't know, and me not ever calling her Tak-kun again.

But wait, wasn't that my line...?

"Hey, this is pretty good." Eri was sipping a drink.

Raharu and I both looked at her. "What's that?" I asked.

"Bloody Mary. Want some?" She offered me a sip. It tasted really good, but kind of fermented at the same time. "It has tequila," Eri said. "We can do grown-up things like drink now, because we're at that age where it's okay."

Raharu sulked on her floating guitar again. "Think it's okay now, huh? You two sure grew up fast. You're probably all fooly cooly all over the place now too, aren't you?" Her mischievous grin appeared as she watched us. I didn't care. I just sipped the Mai Tai that I'd just ordered and felt my head slow down.

"Hey, Tak-kun—"

"My name is Naota. Don't call me Tak-kun; I'm 18 now."

"—we finally got a ship registered for use."

I looked up at Raharu. "What did you say?"

She pulled a strand of hair as she talked. "A ship. We'll be out of here by tomorrow afternoon."

That's when I forgot the Mai Tai. "Where the hell are we going? WHY DID YOU TAKE US HERE?"

She wasn't even fazed. "I didn't even mean to bring your girlfriend, you know. She hung onto the back of my bike when we took off."

"AREN'T YOU GOING TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING?!"

"You should know by now, you idiot!"

The silence that followed was long, and Eri sat behind me the entire time sipping her 5th Bloody Mary. She finally swiveled on the barstool. "Iss all gone, Naota. All gone. But ishure as 'ell was good." She fell on me, smelling like tequila, and wrapped her arms around my neck before passing out on the floor. Imagine that, the class president and valedictorian getting so drunk. It was only her 5th one, jeez... she couldn't hold her alcohol.

As promised, we were out of the clouds of Jupiter by early afternoon the next day. Eri was bent over the toilet in the back, having her first hangover. I was there beside her while she rid herself of the fermented junk she'd consumed the night before. I held her hair back and got a wet rag for her face. It was okay to stick around for people when they went through something like that.

At one point Eri leaned back against the wall. We heard the humming of the electric light above, and her hair was sticking to her face with sweat and tears. She looked at me, and she looked weak and pale. But she told me, "This is why I hung onto that bike. I knew that no matter what happened, I would do something stupid because of you."

I smiled. "I'm glad I was here."

She smiled at me a little. "Naota, do you still like Haruko?"

I shook my head. "Haruko's gone. Raharu is the one who's at the front of the ship right now."

Eri groaned. "Ohhh... my stomach..." She leaned over the toilet again.

I laughed. "You're still sick?"

"It's just the stuff in everyone's stomach! There's nothing left!" she cried as she rocked over the bowl. I tucked her hair inside the back of her shirt before she convulsed and vomited again. Her head fell into my lap and she gasped for breath. "I'm glad... you're... here, Naota." Then she went limp, falling asleep faster than anyone I've ever known.

I flushed the toilet and took her to her bed. She slept without trouble for the rest of the day.

I have a weird sense of humor, so sorry if I lost you... Please review! All you have to do is click on the little box in the corner and tell me what you think! I will have another chapter up very soon! ^-^

With love, Neko-sama=^-.-^=


	3. The MuchAwaited Introduction of Curry! A...

Twitch.

"Well, I guess that settles that."

Twitch. "What do you mean? That didn't settle anything."

"No matter what you do you're surrounded by someone. You'll have to make a sacrifice."

"No! Naota, don't listen to her! She's playing with your head!"

"What else is new? Anyway, you're not supposed to really _talk _about your strategy during a match, are you?"

Raharu cackled. "But that _is _my strategy."

Blink. "What?"

"Elementary, my dear Watson. The more you talk about something the other person doesn't understand, the more you confuse them. If you lie over and over, they're bound to believe you."

"You just gave your whole reasoning away. Now you're the loser."

"Hehe. Not true. Your head is already scrambled."

I could see the vein above Eri's ever-twitching eyebrow grow larger and larger as she listened to Raharu's tricksy tactics explained. I thought she was going to burst into an uncontrollable rage and kill us both, but instead she slammed her fist on the table, making the pieces jump, and started flipping through the book she had found on how to play chess. Yeah, our spaceship had a game closet. I guess the designer knew the feeling of long trips with nothing to do but gawk in wonder at your opposable thumbs.

"Checkmate."

"There's gotta be something…"

"There's nothing you can do! It's already over! THE WORLD AS YOU KNOW IT HAS ENDED! ALL IS LOST!!! BWAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!"

"Cut it out, you mind-control freak! I'm trying to concentrate!"

Raharu went meek. "Oh, sorry. Are you ready for your sacrifice?"

"Sacrifice, my big toe," I muttered before knocking out her queen.

Raharu blinked at the board for a moment. Her voice caught in her throat somewhere between a gasp of horror and "Oh, would you look at that?" Eri looked up from the chess book, her eyes wide with surprise. I hadn't been making plays independently for the entire game until now, and I'd turned the tables in one fell swoop. I was about to do a victory dance and wiggle the "sacrifice" in front of my opponent's face, but before the opportunity arrived I dove face-first into the chessboard. Looking up and wiping the spit off my chin, I saw that all the pieces had gone flying onto the floor. Raharu sat up from the front of the room where she'd landed, rubbing her head. Eri stood, blinking blearily and adjusting her glasses (which were still cute). "What happened?" I asked rhetorically.

Raharu opened the door to the cockpit and peeked through the window. She'd had it on autopilot (which was pretty advanced compared to ours, since it had a feature making the ship incapable of crashing into other objects) while we were playing chess. When she shut the door again, her face was a certain shade of red. "It looks like we've stopped."

I blinked. "Stopped? But why so suddenly? It's like someone just slammed on the brakes!"

The red turned deeper. "We ran out of gas."

Eri leaned her head on the unturned table. "Oh, don't start telling me that this ship runs on _gas_…"

Raharu nodded. "Yeah… I think there're a couple extra litres in the back; that'll get us as far as Feirus…" She made her way to the back of the ship, leaving Eri and me without so much as an explanation.

"Where in the heck is Feirus?" Eri wondered.

"I guess we'll find out when we get there, eh?" I sighed while attempting to put the chess pieces back in the box. My endeavor was cut short when the ship gave a lurch and the back of my head was introduced to the card table. Eri knelt in front of me, collecting the white pawns and the black king and queen, ignoring my predicament. If I knew her, she was thinking I could get out of it myself. She had been trying to make me more independent from other people's help for a few years now. I loved her, but it drove me to the brink sometimes. That's why I had to snicker a little when the ship jolted again and started moving and she fell forward with a cry of surprise. Lifting my head out, I smirked and wiped away the blood from my nose. "Guess she found those two extra litres, huh?"

Raharu came out from the back whistling and dusting her hands off. "We'll be there soon enough, no worries. Uh," she stopped and looked at us, "are you two okay?"

"Dandy," Eri muttered.

"Swell," I grumbled.

"Oh, good! We're all ready to get off, then?"

Looking out the window, I saw that we were landing on an airstrip. I couldn't tell because we were going so fast, but it looked like everything was… so two-dimensional…

As we came to a halt, I realized I was right. "Everything here is made of _paper_."

Raharu led us off the ship and looked around very seriously. "Yep, this is Feirus. As two-dimensional as it cares to get. We're a rare treat here, us 3-D people, you know?"

"This reminds me way too much of _A Wrinkle In Time_," Eri commented as she looked around, "when they warp through the atmosphere of a two-dimensional planet, except nothing is happening to us here."

"Yeah, and on this planet, there _are _no wrinkles," Raharu added.

My head started hurting. Wrinkles…

"_Don't you see?! You're doing exactly what Medical Mechanica wants! They'll iron out the wrinkles so you can't think…_"

Amarao… 

"_It's empty. There's no brain._"

"_Your head's the only one that works, Tak-kun._"

"_You're just her latest victim."_

_"Don't let her use you! FIGHT BACK!"_

_"You should know about your own head!"_

_"You're the one I saw first."_

"Naota?"

So this is what it feels like to be the only one…

"Naota! You in there? Let's go get some gas, okay?"

I was vaulted back to the present world, the world that would have been mine if Medical Mechanica had triumphed. This was that world. The embodiment of my failures. Eri was talking to me and dragging me along with her to go to a gas station somewhere in the paper city. I was in a daze. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to meet anyone who might be 'thinking smooth.' That would be too much. I think I would have overflowed, like Mamimi. I didn't want that to happen, especially on a planet where I didn't know what anyone would do if it did occur, so I decided to stay by the ship instead.

I was there for a few hours. It was kind of boring after a while, so I tried to play chess against myself. White beat black to a pulp. It showed which side I favored very obviously. So that started to get boring, and I tried to find a phone so I could call home. That search bore no results, so I eventually went to sit out in front and stare at the depressing paper landscapes around me. There was nobody there, or if there was I couldn't see anyone. "This is really stupid; where are Raharu and Eri anyway?"

"You mean your two friends who went to go get some gas?"

I froze. Someone was talking to me…

"They'll be back soon. If they aren't, it's probably the clerk who's holding them up. Everyone thinks smooth in this place, but I'm sure you know that by now. Pretty bad, huh? They decided to iron out the bodies, too."

I looked around, hoping not to see anyone, because I knew that whomever I saw would be flat, and they might even look like me. It gave me the creeps just thinking about it, so I buried my face in my arms instead. "Whoever you are, I don't want to talk to you. I can't talk to someone who doesn't think."

"Hey, no worries. I'm just like you, and I think you're just like me, too. We can relate. Open your eyes and look at me, bro."

I reluctantly did as the voice told me to and looked up. I was relieved to see a boy my own age with dark hair and freckles and a mischievous grin. He was three-dimensional, like me. "Oh, good," I sighed. "I thought you were a flat person."

"You probably won't see any of those around here," the boy said as he kicked a little flat stone across the runway. "They don't come out much except for when there's something important." He looked back at me and extended his hand. "Name's Nero. Like the crazy emperor of Rome."

I shook his hand shyly and leaned back against the wall of the ship. Then I stopped and thought about what he'd said. Rome…

"Are you from Earth?"

Nero kicked another pebble. "Yeah. I came from Brooklyn in New York City. My whole family's Italian, so they named me something Roman. Go figure, huh? I was kidnapped by Medical Mechanica and brought here. They discovered my head was right for this kind of job."

I choked in surprise and nearly fell over. "You've got N.O., too?"

"Yeah. They channeled a pretty big robot through my head that activated the plant here pretty easily, but they didn't bother to pull out the guitar. Shame, really. It was a nice one."

"They've got a plant here, too?"

Nero dragged me around the side of the ship and pointed up to the top of a smooth green hill, where there was a giant red iron emitting beams of crimson light. "You'd recognize it. You're probably here because your head works, too, huh?"

It was my turn to introduce myself. "I'm Nandaba Naota. I came from Mabase in Japan."

Nero smirked. "Mabase. I remember hearing that name on the news because a satellite almost hit the city, and a little later there were attacks by giant robots. You sprouted them, right? You know the feeling."

Yeah, I knew. But unlike him, I'd foiled the plans of Medical Mechanica for Earth. They'd succeeded here. I turned to him again and looked at his face. "So what do you do now that your purpose has been served?"

Nero didn't answer me at first, but lifted up his shag-cut bangs to reveal the symbol of Medical Mechanica on his forehead. "I work for them. I did what they wanted, so they let me keep the wrinkles on my brain. I'm one of the people who keeps everything in order that needs to be kept in order, but can't be done by the smooth-thinking people. You could say they consider me a genius." He laughed. "Isn't that crazy, calling an 18-year-old who didn't even finish high school a genius?"

I had to laugh. "If you're such a genius, then can you play chess?"

"Chess… oh, I was the master back in New York. Yeah, I'll play chess. Let's go inside."

And so we did. I was relieved to finally get away from the paper world, and back to something we could both control the outcome of. Games were a big relief, a system you controlled in a world with everyone else trying to control you. Now I finally had someone who understood that as well as I did, someone else who knew how it felt being a pawn.

"So, do you know Raharu?"

Nero almost dropped the bishop he was placing so meticulously. "Raharu? Atomsk's rival? Is she really the one who used you?"

"Yep. Raharu, also known as Haruhara Haruko. She came to Mabase and posed as a housekeeper so she could free Atomsk and get his power using my head. She even used my cat to communicate with her station."

"That's what mine did too, except she posed as a charming, homeless double bass player that my parents were only too kind to take in."

"Double bass? Yow."

"Yeah, and it really hurt when she hit me with it. That thing must have been made out of titanium; it never broke once! She said it was a Juzick, which must have been really rare."

"How old were you?"

"Fourteen."

I opened my mouth to say something else… and so did the door to the ship. "HONEY, WE'RE HOOOOOOOME!!!!!!!!"

I whirled around in my seat. "Where have you two been? I was bored stiff until a few minutes ago!"

Eri eyed me coolly. "You really shouldn't complain. We were in line for an hour. The clerk couldn't even count money. We had to get the manager, and even he didn't know much."

"But we did manage to get a full three tanks worth of gas aaaaaaaaand…" Raharu shuffled around in her bag and pulled out… "an entire jumbo pack of Little Prince Curry! We can have it every night now!"

I moaned and sank into my chair. I still hated curry.

Nero grinned behind me. "I've never tried curry."

Raharu just now noticed Nero as she waved the pack of curry over her head. "Nyo? What's your name?"

"Name's Nero. I'm from planet Earth."

Eri blinked. "Nero? Who would name their kid _that?_" She suddenly changed her position as Raharu waggled the large and rather heavy pack of curry overhead. "Uh, I mean, cool! You're named after a craz—uh, well, an emperor!"

Nero sweatdropped. "Just say it. I'm named after the man who played the fiddle as Rome burned to the ground, and then built his palace over the ruins."

Raharu rushed past into the kitchen, cackling madly. "Heeheehahahaha! Rome is burning, but not the curry!"

"Not yet, anyway," I mumbled. 

Eri rolled her eyes. "You still don't like curry, Naota?"

"I hate spicy stuff."

"But you should have gotten over that a long time ago. You're not a kid anymore, you know. People are actually _supposed _to develop their tastes over time."

"I could care less, okay?"

"At least be willing to try it!"

"We're going to be having curry for the next few weeks with the size of that thing, so it's not like I have a choice!"

"So are you two going out or something?"

We both shifted our glances over at Nero, who had his feet propped on the table. He lifted an eyebrow at us. "Well, are you?"

"Uh… yeah."

He started pushing around chess pieces like it was no big deal. "I could have guessed, the way you argue. Might as well be married."

Eri and I didn't have a moment to be embarrassed, because just then Raharu burst out of the kitchen wearing a maid outfit and carrying a plate full of flaming hot curry. "Dinner's ready!"

I stood up. "I'm not eating that nasty curry!"

Before I knew it, they had duct-taped me to a chair that was nailed to the floor. I knew now what I had not known before when they called me Tak-kun and made me eat curry: that I was being oppressed. I ranted about this and other aspects of true democracy for a good 15 minutes before they duct-taped my mouth shut as well. At least I didn't have to eat the curry.

They were all making a big racket after dinner while they cleaned up (I think they were bloated), and I went to take a shower. I heard laughing a few times and groaned as I shampooed my head. "They're in a good mood."

I suddenly felt hungry and resolved to sneak into the kitchen after everyone had gone to bed and find something non-spicy. For the rest of the evening we played chess (it was a perpetual stalemate between Raharu and Nero) and Eri and I argued over their strategies and how they related.

At about midnight Nero went home and we all tucked in for the night. It was almost kitchen time… the only problem was that Eri was still hot about chess when we finally got to bed.

"It was the rooks… that was her weakness, the rooks. Don't you tell me it was the queen; that was only when you played with her."

I sighed deeply. "Aren't you tired?"

"Maybe, but you were wrong anyways."

"Eri, go to sleep."

"Don't try to change the subject on me, Nandaba!" she half-yelled from the bunk bed above me.

"I'm not; I want to get a good night's sleep. Is that so unreasonable?"

"I'm not finished with you!" she growled.

"Well, I am," I retorted, "and I need to go to the bathroom, so be patient. You can fuss me out later."

Without another word, I headed for the bathroom. If I couldn't make her go to sleep, she could do it on her own. After about twenty minutes sitting and reading an old magazine, I pressed my ear to the door. I could barely hear Eri's deep, slumberous breathing. She was finally asleep, or she was really mad and wanted to trick me. I'd soon see. My stomach was growling like a beast in a pit, so I cracked the door and, seeing her asleep, sneaked past into the kitchen. Once there, it was like being out of jail for the first time in an eternity. I sucked in that thick, aromatic air and smelled spice. It was enough to make my mouth water. "Now," I said to myself, "the FOOD…"

A few spare minutes later, I was down the airstrip in my bathrobe, shivering and muttering to myself, about as mad as a cow.

I arrived at a gas station (which was also flat) and hesitated, recalling my ideals of sticking with the 3-dimensional scenery and population of the planet. 

But was it really worth starving…?

I puffed out a cloud of cold air and furrowed my brow. "To hell with it," I muttered through gritted teeth, "if I'm going to live through this trip, I'll have to make sacrifices in my own name." Man, I wished Canti were there…

As I marched into the gas station, I tried to forget the vision I'd seen inside Medical Mechanica and pretend to be an innocent, simple-minded earthling. I went through the paper doors and into the paper room. I saw nobody moving in there. I smirked. Maybe just steal something… you'll be off the planet by tomorrow morning.

And so I resolved to do just that. I opened one of the cabinets inside the store, only to choke on a stench so thick that I stumbled back—right into a rack filled to the top with different-flavored curry powders. I turned around and saw the bottles in the cabinet to be filled with curry sauce! I opened one after another after another cabinet; all were filled with every kind of curry _thing_ you could imagine!!! My brain gave a blink and my body gave a shudder, and I fell… straight into my worst dream for my planet. I looked up, and there it was. No dimension, just standing over me like a cardboard cutout. I did not move when it smiled at me, showing its unbearably perfect paper-cutting teeth, and raised an arm with a crinkling sound. It opened its mouth, leaning over me, ready to devour me bit by bit. I screamed, but as I screamed it said something. I backed away, gasping, but managed to squeak out a "WHAT?!"

"Everything is 5¥."

I calmed down a little bit. Maybe he _could think for himself a little bit. "Well, um… do you carry anything that isn't curry-flavored?"_

He stared at me dumbly for a few seconds before he smiled his paper smile again. "Curry? We have plenty of that. Yes, we also have bottled curry sauce and curry-covered beans and Little Prince curry with chocolate icing. We have curry powder over there, and liquid curry—" 

"I asked if you had anything that was NOT curry."

"Notcurry? Curry with nots! That is a good idea! And buy some curry cheese while you're here!"

"I DON'T WANT ANY CURRY!"

"Curry! We have curry! Buy curry! Eat curry! Curry curry curry! Sticky curry! Frozen curry! Super-spicy curry BREAD! Even… furry curry, for the ones who like fuzz!"

I froze.

Furi Kuri.

The paper man could say nothing more before I ran out of the store screaming, spit flying from my mouth, empty-handed. I was going back to the ship to hide from these monsters.

I was almost home free when I ran into something else… something sticky. I realized with horror that this was a sticky curry spill. The spice was gagging me, my eyes were watering, I might have been blacking out…

"Naota! Hang in there, man!"

I looked up and realized I was on solid ground. Nero was standing over me. We were in the ship. Had it all been a dream?

"Dude, when I found you, you were drowning in some weird jelly stuff. Smelled like some kind of spice. You all right?"

"What a nightmare…" was all I could say, even though it hadn't been a dream after all.

Nero grinned his signature grin. "Your girlfriend just went to the store. She felt bad that you had nothing to eat except that Little Prince stuff that you don't like, so she's getting you non-spicy food."

I should have been glad and thankful that Eri cared enough after being mad at me all day before, but I moaned and thunked my head against the bedpost repeatedly. My nightmares were over, but I had gained nothing for my courageous efforts on the paper planet except for clear sinuses and one perpetual headache.

Okay, this chapter was kind of random. I just felt like writing it, and Nero is a new character; make him as bishonen as your mind tells you to! Sorry it took so long. Thanks for the reviews!


End file.
